How the Second Great
Awakening took the Fun out of Nineteenth Century America

By: Savannah L. Williamson

(Submitted
to Dr. Jeff Bremer, Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University,

for
partial fulfillment for the requirements of 19th Century American Social History)

Pre-marital
sex and the consumption of alcohol are perennial elements in American life.
While many may think this statement would most accurately describe a modern
day college campus, it is actually an accurate portrayal of the whole United
States throughout the nineteenth century. These trends continued until one reform
movement resulted in a sudden decrease in pre-marital sexual activity and in
the incidence of constant intoxication. This reform came in the shape of religion.
The Second Great Awakening brought about several changes in society that altered
the way Americans lived their lives. After the mid-nineteenth century, the use
of sex and alcohol would never be the same. Ultimately, the Second Great Awakening,
through the reformation of consumption of alcohol and sexuality, shook America
to its core and altered the everyday lives of a nation forever.

Religion
before the Second Great Awakening was simple: God no longer played an important
role in everyday life. God was not interested in a person’s church attendance
or tithes. Rather, God would determine a person’s eternal destination,
whether a person was saved or damned, based on how life was lived. People became
more interested in making money than in going to church on Sundays. This led
to a decline in religious fervor, and church attendance. As a result, Americans
did not necessarily portray a shining example of good behavior. So, through
the pre-revival religious views, it is easy to see why behavior was so unfettered
and extreme.

America is
a nation with alcohol at its core. Since the Mayflower’s stop in Plymouth
for the purpose of finding water to make beer, the nation has always had strong
spirits at the center of its society. Since the seventeenth century in America,
it was taught to all classes that alcohol was nutritious. Alcohol, in all of
its forms, was used as a food supplement so that the daily diet of Americans
would not seems so dull. Most importantly, it was safe. In a time when the water
could be filled with any variety of potentially deadly diseases, alcohol killed
bacteria. Alcohol was safe. So, while people who drank the water became very
ill and could possibly even die, those who consumed alcohol did not. This fact
also helped people to believe that alcohol was a sort of medication that would
cure and/or prevent illnesses. It was used to cure colds, fevers, depression,
and it even could provide strength.

All together, it is estimated
that Americans drank 72 million gallons of liquor each year. The average American
over the age of fifteen consumed an estimated average of seven gallons of spirits
each year. To be drunk was a part of life, and liquor had its place in every
meal. Anyone who preached against alcohol at the time was ostracized from society.
Drinking was even encouraged by public officials, who would distribute whiskey
at rallies in order to obtain votes. Unfortunately, along with alcohol come
its consequences: people were often drunk, and became a liability to their employees
and their households. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, even noted the
harmful effect that alcohol had in the workplace. Franklin lectured workers
that strong drink made them less industrious and he often complained of a decreased
productivity in the printing business where he worked. Additionally, it was
believed that drunkenness led to poverty, a decline in intelligence, and an
increase in inappropriate social visits from the opposite sex. Drinking was
part of everyday life, but that would soon change with the coming of religion.

Another area in which
Americans were rambunctious was sex. While most people may not believe that
premarital sex was very common in nineteenth century America, promiscuity did
hold its place within its own facet of society. Family stability in New England
communities made it easier for parents to enforce and control sexuality in their
young children as they came of age. However, in the Chesapeake, a large number
of single immigrants and high mortality rates created a large number of orphans,
whose sexual activity was more difficult to monitor. Additionally, single women
in the South were in such a high demand early on during settlement, so this
possibly made the young women less concerned about guarding their virginity
than in New England, or than in a stricter Puritan system.

There was also a great
deal of temptation that existed for women in the Chesapeake area, because they
were able to remarry if something were to happen to their husband, or if they
were to divorce. Knowing this, they may have been easily swayed by the advances
of men. Also, with such a high number of single men in the south, southern women
had more opportunities to come into contact with the advances of these men.

Within the colonies, there
was also a difference between the North and the South in the punishments for
pre-marital relations. In the North, as in New England, the church and the courts
both prosecuted fornicators with a punishment of fines or whipping. Conversely,
with New England being such a racially and socially homogeneous population,
with common religious values and a close sense of community, Puritans believed
themselves responsible for the sexual wellbeing and safety of all within their
society. In these instances, sexuality was charged as a capital crime, the same
as treason, murder, or witchcraft. On the other hand, the less tightly knit
communities, such as in the South, had a less vigorous enforcement or punishment
for violations of such laws. Within dispersed plantation communities or in backcountry
areas, where clergy were in short supply to enforce religious adherence to chastity,
people simply accepted consensual sex, with or without marriage, and did not
condemn the births of illegitimate children. The courts seemed to even tolerate
sexual offenses.
The differing labor systems of the North and the South also influenced the extent
of the sexual system in America. In the South, any indentured servants made
up a large group of young people who could not marry, making them more vulnerable
to advances by other men or women. Also, because of living conditions, children
were exposed early on to sexual activity. Reproduction and production of goods
went hand in hand: the more labor needed, the more reproductive efforts. With
the small size of houses in America, children saw and heard sexual activity
among adults at a young age. While curtains may have isolated the parental bed,
all members of a family would commonly share a room, especially during the cold
winters when a single fireplace was used to keep the family warm.

The concept of engagement
during nineteenth century America is a gray area when it comes to sex. While
officially, pre-marital sex was discouraged, there is evidence suggesting that
engagement might have included the right to sexual intercourse. While the church
and courts condemned sex outside of marriage, as long as the couple eventually
married, they could both remain everyday citizens within the community. So,
while pre-marital sex was preached against, if it occurred it was not as critical
as long as marriage followed. Consequentially, the incidence of prenuptial pregnancy
and conception varied region to region. In the Chesapeake, by the end of the
eighteenth century, an estimated thirty percent of all brides were already pregnant;
in the middle colonies, twenty-five percent; in the South, between thirty and
fifty percent. This was partially attributed to the ideas of the Enlightenment
that were published and spread throughout the United States in the eighteenth
century. In these writings, sexuality was elevated to a level of being good
and desirable, as an emphasis on personal happiness was encouraged. This inspired
a shift in the family lifestyle. More focus was placed on sexual pleasure, rather
than purely on reproduction, leading to a breakdown of traditional restraints
during courtship. Also, as survival rates of children rose, less emphasis was
placed on conception, so there was much more sexual gratification and individual
choice before marriage when it came to sex. Physical courtship became much more
common in American society. Thus, premarital pregnancies became much higher
by the end of the eighteenth century, with far fewer punishments from within
the society and more tolerance from within the family, who were less likely
to charge any member with fornication.

So, before the Second
Great Awakening, pre-marital sex and conception were a common part of everyday
life. This does not mean that all young men and women were having sex; merely
that sexual license became more widespread as the religious and cultural restrictions
were loosened. As sexual desires were emphasized more, and family size became
less of an issue, promiscuity became more acceptable or more tolerated within
communities.

Soon, however, things
changed. Religion swept across the United States like wildfire, burning strong
in the hearts and lives of Americans. The Second Great Awakening was a religious
revival that occurred in the United States between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth
century. Usually preached at camp meetings or big tent revivals, adherence to
the word of God was spread swiftly across the country. This revival emphasized
a renewed dependence on God. The most influential of the revivalists was Charles
G. Finney. Finney began to spread his ideas in upstate New York in the 1820s.
Finney emphasized a return to God, a land where Americans would devote themselves
to living a Godly life. Church attendance and membership suddenly spiked, and
Americans suddenly wanted to change themselves, as well as their neighbors throughout
the rest of the country. The Second Great Awakening can be considered a way
for the church to put fear into the minds of the congregations. It is also possible
that it was a method for the ministers to maintain their traditional roles in
the church and in society, with dominance over the masses. The church emphasized
order, discipline, and self-restraint to the frontier.
Many reform groups sprang from the Second Great Awakening, including the Connecticut
Society for the Reformation of Morals. The main goal of such societies was to
suppress evils and sins in everyday lives of Americans. The Connecticut Society,
particularly, was charged with the duty of ridding the country of immorality,
including Sabbath-breaking, intemperance ,and profanity, and with encouraging
order, piety, and good morals.

However, it is now widely
considered among historians that the evangelicals of the Second Great Awakening
were merely serving their own interests, and not truly aiding mankind. Their
real goal, it seems, was social control, imposing their own standards and authority
upon the lower class, poor Americans. The cost of this endeavor was a loss of
diversity and individualism among American society. Thus, the Second Great Awakening
was merely a device for the few to control the will of the many.

While the movement may
have had pure intentions in the beginning, it began with a common dislike of
the deviance that was spreading across the country. Any shift away from the
New England and Puritan way of life was seen as unruly. Evangelism and its benevolence
spread in the 1820s, thanks greatly to the work of one man: Charles G. Finney..
Finney preached a perfectionist way of life, free of sins. Finney ‘s rhetoric
attacked the moral decline that was taking place in this country, as well as
heathenism that was seemingly becoming more common than churchgoing. Most importantly,
Finney preached on individual improvements: people can be helped, should be
helped, and that the world would be a better place as a result of this transformation.
Finney preached these ideas mostly from a revival tent in New York, where people
would come to listen to his speeches and take in everything that he was saying
about individuals changing their ways.

Ultimately, these revivals
were extremely successful for religion, and for the Second Great Awakening.
Church and religion became the latest and greatest thing to be involved in if
one was to be seen as a good Christian in the United States. The idea was that
the individual had not only to go to church and read the Bible; the individual
had to approach God and choose whether or not to be saved. So, the individual
now appears to have control over his or her own salvation. However, it is not
enough to merely do this. Salvation was determined by an emotional, life-changing
experience. In order to maintain salvation, one would have to maintain religious
devotion through continued experiences with visible impact, both outward and
inward, continuous inward piety, and right moral behavior. In the words of Charles
Finney, “Conversion or regeneration is the work of the man”. So,
while the individual person had control over his or her salvation, one still
had to conform to how evangelists defined true salvation experiences and the
subsequent moral lifestyle that should accompany it.

The impact of the Second
Great Awakening was almost instantly visible within everyday society in nineteenth
century America. Thanks to the preaching of Finney and evangelists like him,
consumption of alcohol, hard liquor in particular, declined dramatically after
1830. Soon, the average consumption dropped to 1.8 gallons per year per person
over the age of fifteen. This was a drastic change from the earlier average
of seven gallons. Additionally, the evangelists were helping this number to
decline by setting up voluntary societies for the promotion of self control
and moderation. The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, became the
example that would be followed by other organizations in order to influence
public opinion.

Additionally, the spreading
of a moral life style throughout the United States was highly valued in religious
circles. Intemperance was seen as something of a social stigma, and groups such
as the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals attempted to convert
the heathens and draw them away from alcohol, closer to God. Lyman Beecher,
a reformer and Puritan minister, began to speak out against liquor. Beecher
professed that alcohol would “bring the community intemperance, and poverty,
and shame”. Soon, religious organizations and churches, such as the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, had officially gone on record against drunkenness,
even appointing a committee to determine enforcement of sobriety and punishment
for its violation. Beecher eventually gave a total of six temperance speeches
that were soon published and sent outwards from New England in order to spread
the temperance movement to the rest of the country. Beecher would have built
an empire of societies promoting temperance, pressuring and persuading the rest
of America to join them. These societies destroyed all middle ground, saying
that any consumption of liquor, no matter how small, was intolerable in the
eyes of God. Oddly enough, many decided to find a loophole in the wording of
their pledge against liquor. By implication, the word liquor excluded wine and
beer, because liquor is something that is distilled. However, many believed
that they could still get drunk off beer or wine, despite the message of abstinence
from alcohol in all of its forms that was sent through the new religious revival.
On the other end of the spectrum, some people went to the extremes and even
gave up communion wine in order to adhere strictly to their new rules. By the
end of 1840, hundreds of thousands of men in the Northern United States, alone,
pledged temperance within three years, and temperance groups began to form outside
of religious groups, appealing to men and women of all religions and cultures
within the United States.

There were also political
effects on society as a result of temperance. While many politicians used to
pass whiskey around in order to sway votes, Americans began voting against the
ones who drank or promoted drinking or passed around the drink. Party loyalties
were broken, and people looked for more sober, and thus more Christian, candidates.
Not only did it change campaigning, but it changed how politicians thought of
their election strategies. Furthermore, the temperance leaders, whether religious
or political, were extremely powerful in the lives of the everyday working American.
As a result, there was even more pressure put on citizens to play follow the
leader and listen to the lectures that were taught to them, with the key lesson
being temperance. Persuasion, not force, was used to convert the masses to the
standard which was set by those in power, politicians and church authorities.
Those with persuasion over the population set an example through abstinence
from drinking. Members of society learned that it would be best for them not
to drink it, sell it, produce it, or provide it to others, and advised their
friends to do the same. The ultimate goal, similar to many other goals of religion,
was shame; a goal that was successful in nineteenth century America.

Just as alcohol took a
new direction, coital relations were also interrupted, metaphorically and literally.
The reverends and ministers of the evangelical movement began to focus on the
individual vices of young people in nineteenth century America. Men like Reverend
Charles H. Parkhurst demanded reform after seeing the brothels of New York and
all of its virtues, or lack there of. In an attempt to end the “social
evil”, he spread the word of the Second Great Awakening to bring social
purity to America. Parkhurst involved not only the religious community, but
the medical community, preaching chastity and the exclusion of pre-marital sex.
Parkhurst even went so far as to link poverty to sexual promiscuity out of wedlock,
in an attempt to scare the youth of America into keeping their pants on and
doing less reproductive things in their free time.

Others would also preach
on abstinence. A Presbyterian minister, Sylvester Graham, wrote lectures on
Chastity, denouncing all forms of sexual deviance, such as masturbation, any
sexual excesses, and compelling a no tolerance policy on premarital sex or conception.
“Venereal indulgences”, as he called them, were not to be yielded
to, or there would be terrible side effects. The possible side effects included
insanity, debility, and death. The need for sex, or giving in to sexual desires,
was considered a spiritual weakness that would be unacceptable in such a time
of religious revival. Not only was sex thought to be bad for one’s health,
it was bad for the soul, as well. Pre-marital, irresponsible sex was seen as
something that would tear the church apart. Pleasing the urges and desires of
the flesh involved a neglect of one’s duty to God. Evangelical Christians,
in an attempt to preach self control, determined that sexual desire and carnal
urges were not physical, but mental. Sex no longer existed within the four humors
of the body, but was in the mind, originating from messages between nerves in
the brain. Thus, the voice of restraint could be used to overpower these messages
and send a new message of self control, with virginity being the religious ideal
for all of those who were not married.

With this increase in
the practice of control, sexuality was changed within the public arena. Premarital
sex became seen as profane and un-Christian by the rest of religious society,
and these sinning natures were in need of control. It was no longer as acceptable
to have sex before marriage, and young people began to pay more attention to
the sermons of their preachers on the subject of abstinence. Women, being drawn
in by the Second Great Awakening in the largest numbers, began to save themselves
for marriage and had fewer encounters with the opposite sex, in an attempt to
retain sexual purity. Sexual expression was, therefore, repressed until marriage.

Soon, decade by decade,
the percentage of women who conceived before marriage declined. In New England,
the number dropped from nearly one third of all brides being pregnant, to one
fifth or sixth by 1840 at the end of the Second Great Awakening, cutting the
numbers in half. In some areas, the number of prenuptial pregnancies declined
to a mere five percent. This drastic change shows the dramatic changes in sexual
behavior. There was a much greater enthusiasm for the idea of self control for
the individual, and new boundaries were formed in the ways of courtships between
young men and women. Sex became something that was preserved until after marriage,
and intercourse before marriage was abandoned by most Americans. Chastity continued
to be expected of young men and women by the rest of society, if one was to
practice self control and piety in the Christian way. These ideas of communal
celibacy, promoted by Sylvester Graham, gave the most dramatic testimony to
change in Americas’ sexual ideals and practices. Women renounced their
sexuality, and the number of unwed pregnant women continued to decline. It was
soon evident that self control over the urge to practice procreation had become
instilled in everyday life of nineteenth century America.

The nineteenth century
was a time of great change in America. The Second Great Awakening and the revival
of religion in the United States is one of the movements that made a resoundingly
powerful impact on everyday society in America. This is not to say that religion
is the only source of changes within the American lifestyle. However, with the
decrease in alcoholism and a an emphasis on self-control over indulgences of
the flesh, American society was better able to focus more on individualism and
a stronger relationship with God that would ultimately show to benefit productivity
throughout the country. With less drunkenness and smaller, older families, America
could focus on hard work and the practice of the everyday social values that
came to be prized in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, religion and evangelism
throughout the Second Great Awakening changed American society by decreasing
promiscuity, making it a more admirable if a far less interesting place to live.